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The First Amendment prohibits Congress from making laws that abridge freedom of speech or of the press, but in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s murder, it’s clear that it doesn’t take a law to attack those rights.

Guest:  Karen Attiah, former columnist for the Washington Post and former editor of the Post’s Global Opinions section.

Want more What Next? Subscribe to Slate Plus to access ad-free listening to the whole What Next family and across all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe today on Apple Podcasts by clicking “Try Free” at the top of our show page. Sign up now at slate.com/whatnextplus to get access wherever you listen.

Podcast production by Elena Schwartz, Paige Osburn, Anna Phillips, Madeline Ducharme, and Rob Gunther.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On this episode: Lucy, Zak, and Elizabeth mark Child Passenger Safety Week with a conversation about car seats. Child passenger safety technician Jamie Grayson joins to break down the basics: how to install correctly, when to switch stages, and the mistakes parents don’t even realize they’re making.

Here is the NHTSA car seat safety page.

Listen to our last episode with Jamie: Car Seat Safety Explained!

Then, in a round of triumphs and fails, the hosts tackle tough conversations about sharing, the tricky art of trusting kids’ street smarts, and Zak’s rude awakening about how much a Labubu really costs. 

Join us on Facebook and email us at [email protected] to ask us new questions, tell us what you thought of today’s show, and give us ideas about what we should talk about in future episodes. You can also call our phone line: (646) 357-9318.

If you enjoy this show, please consider signing up for Slate Plus. Slate Plus members get to hang out with us on the Plus Playground every week for a whole additional grab-bag of content — and you’ll get an ad-free experience across the network. And you’ll also be supporting the work we do here on Care and Feeding. Sign up now at slate.com/careplus – or try it out on Apple Podcasts.

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When an actor opens their mouth to sing in a movie, chances are high that the voice you hear will be their own. Even in music biopics, movie stars without much singing experience regularly go to great lengths to impersonate the most beloved vocalists of our time. Why not simply play Johnny Cash or Bruce Springsteen’s actual recordings, the reasons why we care about them in the first place? When the world is full of beautiful singing voices, why force Pierce Brosnan to bray his way through Mamma Mia?

What you hear when an actor unhinges their jaw is a matter that Hollywood has been negotiating since the dawn of sound. So in this episode, we’ll learn about the “ghost singers” of classic Hollywood musicals, find out why they went extinct, and why today’s music biopics so often fudge the music. Then we leave Hollywood for Bollywood, where the rise of the celebrity “playback singer” shows what can happen when good singing is the highest priority.

In this episode, you’ll hear from Slate’s pop music critic Jack Hamilton; musicologist Dominic Broomfield-McHugh, editor of The Oxford Handbook of the Hollywood Musical; Stephen Cole, co-author of a memoir by the ghost singer Marni Nixon; Isaac Butler, longtime Slate contributor and scholar of American acting; and Nasreen Munni Kabir, who has written several books on Hindi cinema and curates Indian films for the UK’s Channel 4.

If you want to listen to any of the songs you heard in this episode in full, you can find them all on this Spotify playlist.

This episode was written and produced by Max Freedman. It was edited by Willa Paskin and Evan Chung, our supervising producer. Decoder Ring is also produced by Katie Shepherd. Merritt Jacob is Senior Technical Director. 

If you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode, email us at [email protected] or leave a message on our hotline at (347) 460-7281.

Sources for This Episode

Basinger, Jeanine. The Movie Musical! Alfred A. Knopf, 2019.

Beaster-Jones, Jayson. Bollywood Sounds: The Cosmopolitan Mediations of Hindi Film Song, Oxford University Press, 2015.

Butler, Isaac. The Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned to Act, Bloomsbury, 2022.

Hamilton, Jack. “The Problem With Music Biopics Is Bigger Than Just the Cliches,” Slate, May 17, 2024. 

Kabir, Nasreen Munni. Lata Mangeshkar ...in Her Own Voice, Niyogi Books, 2009.

Nixon, Marni with Stephen Cole. I Could Have Sung All Night: My Story, Billboard Books, 2006.

Robbins, Allison. “‘Experimentations by Our Sound Department’: Playback Stars in 1930s Hollywood.” Star Turns in Hollywood Musicals, edited by Chabrol Marguerite and Toulza Pierre-Olivier, Presses universitaires de Paris Nanterre, 2017.

Srivastava, Sanjay. “Voice, Gender and Space in Time of Five-Year Plans: The Idea of Lata Mangeshkar,” Economic and Political Weekly, vol. 39, no. 20, 2004.

Get more of Decoder Ring with Slate Plus! Join for exclusive bonus episodes of Decoder Ring and ad-free listening on all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe from the Decoder Ring show page on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Or, visit slate.com/decoderplus for access wherever you listen.

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On this week’s episode, Julia and Dana are joined by Slate writer (and Philadelphia native) Nadira Goffe for a conversation rooted in Delaware County about Task, HBO’s new gritty crime drama from the creators of Mare of Easttown. 

Next, the hosts give longtime listeners what they’ve been chirping for: a discussion of birding. Specifically, it’s a discussion about the dirtbag, gonzo, totally self-produced and independently released documentary Listers: A Glimpse Into Extreme Birdwatching. Finally, they get into the Jimmy Kimmel situation. Why was his show cancelled, then uncancelled, then blacked out from several media markets? What does it mean for the state of free speech and democracy itself?

In an exclusive Slate Plus bonus episode, the panel is joined by Dan Kois to delight in Slate’s package on The 25 Best Picture Books of the Past 25 Years.

Email us your thoughts at [email protected]. 

Podcast production by Benjamin Frisch. Production assistance by Daniel Hirsch.

Endorsements

Nadira: In addition to the Explore.org's Fat Bear Week, the work of singer-songwriter KeiyaA who recently released the tracks "stupid prizes" and "take it" from her forthcoming album hooke’s law.

Dana: Seeing Stanley Kubrick’s epic Barry Lyndon in its 4K re-release on the best screen you possibly can.

Julia: Meghan O'Rourke's New York Times essay "I Teach Creative Writing. This Is What A.I. Is Doing to Students."

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Candice Lim and Kate Lindsay break down the drama between Vlogbrothers star Hank Green and the online knitting community. Earlier this month, Green posted an educational SciShow episode about the knitting community’s contribution to physics. What the SciShow team didn’t expect were almost 30-minute long reaction videos and accusations of belittling and misogyny. This saga has spurred apology TikToks, vows to knit simple socks, and a bigger discussion about how an offline pastime became one of the most drama-filled communities online.

Get more of ICYMI with Slate Plus! Join for exclusive bonus episodes of ICYMI and ad-free listening on all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe from the ICYMI show page on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Or, visit slate.com/icymiplus for access wherever you listen.

This podcast is produced by Vic Whitley-Berry, Daisy Rosario, Candice Lim, and Kate Lindsay.

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Over three different trips during the war, this doctor saw the chaos of blast injuries in northern Gaza give way to gunshot wounds suffered at aid-distribution sites in the south. 

Guest:  Dr. Mohammed "Adeel" Khaleel, minimally invasive and complex spinal surgeon with Texas Metroplex Institute for Sports Medicine & Orthopedic Surgery.

Want more What Next? Subscribe to Slate Plus to access ad-free listening to the whole What Next family and across all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe today on Apple Podcasts by clicking “Try Free” at the top of our show page. Sign up now at slate.com/whatnextplus to get access wherever you listen.

Podcast production by Elena Schwartz, Paige Osburn, Anna Phillips, Madeline Ducharme, and Rob Gunther.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

When an actor opens their mouth to sing in a movie, chances are high that the voice you hear will be their own. Even in music biopics, movie stars without much singing experience regularly go to great lengths to impersonate the most beloved vocalists of our time. Why not simply play Johnny Cash or Bruce Springsteen’s actual recordings, the reasons why we care about them in the first place? When the world is full of beautiful singing voices, why force Pierce Brosnan to bray his way through Mamma Mia?

What you hear when an actor unhinges their jaw is a matter that Hollywood has been negotiating since the dawn of sound. So in this episode, we’ll learn about the “ghost singers” of classic Hollywood musicals, find out why they went extinct, and why today’s music biopics so often fudge the music. Then we leave Hollywood for Bollywood, where the rise of the celebrity “playback singer” shows what can happen when good singing is the highest priority.

In this episode, you’ll hear from Slate’s pop music critic Jack Hamilton; musicologist Dominic Broomfield-McHugh, editor of The Oxford Handbook of the Hollywood Musical; Stephen Cole, co-author of a memoir by the ghost singer Marni Nixon; Isaac Butler, longtime Slate contributor and scholar of American acting; and Nasreen Munni Kabir, who has written several books on Hindi cinema and curates Indian films for the UK’s Channel 4.

If you want to listen to any of the songs you heard in this episode in full, you can find them all on this Spotify playlist.

This episode was written and produced by Max Freedman. It was edited by Willa Paskin and Evan Chung, our supervising producer. Decoder Ring is also produced by Katie Shepherd. Merritt Jacob is Senior Technical Director. 

If you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode, email us at [email protected] or leave a message on our hotline at (347) 460-7281.

Sources for This Episode

Basinger, Jeanine. The Movie Musical! Alfred A. Knopf, 2019.

Beaster-Jones, Jayson. Bollywood Sounds: The Cosmopolitan Mediations of Hindi Film Song, Oxford University Press, 2015.

Butler, Isaac. The Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned to Act, Bloomsbury, 2022.

Hamilton, Jack. “The Problem With Music Biopics Is Bigger Than Just the Cliches,” Slate, May 17, 2024. 

Kabir, Nasreen Munni. Lata Mangeshkar ...in Her Own Voice, Niyogi Books, 2009.

Nixon, Marni with Stephen Cole. I Could Have Sung All Night: My Story, Billboard Books, 2006.

Robbins, Allison. “‘Experimentations by Our Sound Department’: Playback Stars in 1930s Hollywood.” Star Turns in Hollywood Musicals, edited by Chabrol Marguerite and Toulza Pierre-Olivier, Presses universitaires de Paris Nanterre, 2017.

Srivastava, Sanjay. “Voice, Gender and Space in Time of Five-Year Plans: The Idea of Lata Mangeshkar,” Economic and Political Weekly, vol. 39, no. 20, 2004.

Get more of Decoder Ring with Slate Plus! Join for exclusive bonus episodes of Decoder Ring and ad-free listening on all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe from the Decoder Ring show page on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Or, visit slate.com/decoderplus for access wherever you listen.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this mailbag episode of How To!, we get an update from Elizabeth, the 43-year-old listener who contacted us for advice on her plan to have sex for the first time. Then, co-hosts Courtney Martin and Carvell Wallace get listeners’ takes on our most talked-about episodes of the year—and the staff holds an impromptu idea meeting for upcoming episodes.

Links Mentioned: 

My Old Books

Do you have a problem that needs solving? Send us a note at [email protected] or leave us a voicemail at 646-495-4001 and we might have you on the show. Subscribe for free on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen.

The show is produced by Rosemary Belson, with Kevin Bendis and Sophie Summergrad. Our technical director is Merritt Jacob and our supervising producer is Joel Meyer.

Get more of How To! with Slate Plus! Join for exclusive bonus episodes of How To! and ad-free listening on all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe from the How To! show page on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Or, visit slate.com/howtoplus for access wherever you listen.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Over the past few months, we've been asking you to tell us stories about your beauty interventions. You told us about feeling caught between viewing appearance improvements as vanity and recognizing how much looking a certain way affects your relationships, career, and self-worth.

In this episode, Anna talks to listeners about their appearance choices: Asher, who spent $43,000 on plastic surgery and openly celebrates his investments; Caroline, who used fillers and Botox after her divorce but recently filed for bankruptcy and can no longer afford treatments; Alexandra, who stopped dyeing her gray hair at 38 despite pushback from family; and Nick, whose multiple cosmetic surgeries nearly ended his marriage and forced him to confront deeper issues.

Read Nick Dothée’s essay: What Plastic Surgery Couldn’t Fix

Podcast production by Zoe Azulay

Death, Sex & Money is now produced by Slate! To support us and our colleagues, please sign up for our membership program, Slate Plus! Members get ad-free podcasts, bonus content on lots of Slate shows, and full access to all the articles on Slate.com. Sign up today at slate.com/dsmplus.

And if you’re new to the show, welcome. We’re so glad you’re here. Find us and follow us on Instagram and you can find Anna’s newsletter at annasale.substack.com. Our new email address, where you can reach us with voice memos, pep talks, questions, critiques, is [email protected].

Get 50% Off Monarch Money, the all-in-one financial tool at ⁠www.monarchmoney.com/DSM⁠

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American agriculture relies on foreign workers, and they rely on the H-2A visa program to work legally in the United States. Despite a growing number of people applying for visa spots, the Trump administration has proposed cutting the division of the Department of Labor that enforces H-2A rules, leaving workers to choose between being vulnerable to ICE or to exploitation. 

Guest: Max Blau, ProPublica reporter covering health care, the environment, agriculture and immigration.

Want more What Next? Subscribe to Slate Plus to access ad-free listening to the whole What Next family and across all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe today on Apple Podcasts by clicking “Try Free” at the top of our show page. Sign up now at slate.com/whatnextplus to get access wherever you listen.

Podcast production by Elena Schwartz, Paige Osburn, Anna Phillips, Madeline Ducharme, and Rob Gunther.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.